


Wicked Game

by Quedarius



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Accidental Bonding, Age Difference, Alpha Hannibal, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Dubious Consent, First Meetings, First Time, I'm not a complete monster, JustFuckMeUp, Knotting, M/M, Now with actual plot!, Omega Will Graham, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, This is endgame hannigram i promise
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-06-06
Updated: 2018-07-01
Packaged: 2018-07-12 17:00:51
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 8
Words: 15,815
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7114537
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Quedarius/pseuds/Quedarius
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>First Heat Will/Hannibal A/B/O, for the #JustFuckMeUp kink fest. It <strike>is</strike> was exactly what it sounds like. </p>
<p>*Edit*<br/>Thanks to the many suggestions and encouragements I received on the first chapter, this is now a multi-chapter fic.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. World on Fire

It starts as a fever. 

Not a high one, just the familiar, uncanny sensation of being disoriented, like the first stage of the flu. Flushed and at once chilled, he looks down at his hands sometime during History and sees that they’re shaking. Bev narrows her eyes at him twenty minutes later, when the bell has apparently rung without him noticing, and they are the only two left in the room.

“ _ Will _ .” she says, enunciating very clearly, and he realizes this must not be the first time she’s said his name. “You okay?”

He shakes his head, swipes a clammy palm across his face. 

“I uh…”

_ My head is on fire _ .

“I think I need to go home,” he finishes at last, starts sweeping his books messily from the desk into his bag. He doesn’t meet her eyes, is scared to, because suddenly it’s not just his head that feels warm, it’s everywhere, and with a sudden sinking feeling, he thinks he understands what’s happening.

“Okay,” she says, her hand hovering somewhere near his back, but not quite touching, “Okay. Want me to call someone for you?”

Will thinks for a moment of having to explain to his dad, and winces the thought away,

“No, no. It’s fine. I’ll walk home.”

 

In the halls, it becomes worse. Scents are everywhere, smells of chalk and markers and sunlight filtering through wood and plaster, but also the deeper, richer scents of bodies, musky and new. When he steps out, it’s dizzying, the pound of his head giving way to the pound of his heart, and something strange pools warmly, deep in his belly. His arm sweeps out blindly, catches the first surface he finds; the lockers, and he steadies himself a moment, the cool metal grounding, slowly becoming more real as he comes to terms with the situation.

_ “Sex,” the teacher says, clicking to the next slide, an embarrassingly out of date graphic of a shyly smiling boy in a polo shirt next to the words ‘Your Changing Body.’ There’s a chorus of hushed giggles, and the teacher waits patiently for them to pass, her eyes rolled skywards.  _

_ “Likely some of you have been tested and already know what sex you are, but I’m sure at least a few of you don’t. Tell me, what’s the first thing you should do if you go into an unexpected heat?” _

The nurse, Will thinks suddenly, his head clearing for a moment. He should go to the nurse, and she’ll give him a temporary suppressant. This will all go away, and then he can figure out what to do about the fact that he’s  _ this _ close to grinding himself against the lockers, desperate suddenly for any kind of friction. He groans, shifts to take an unsteady step in the right direction, and Christ, isn’t he too old for this to be happening?

The office door clicks open, then shut, the drifting pleasantries called back indicating the end of a conversation. And then he is there, in the hall with Will, whose legs feel close to giving out.

The man is tall and trim, well-dressed. A heavy watch rests on his wrist, and the ghost of a smile hums on his pleasantly shaped lips as he adjusts his patterned tie. His shoulders slide powerfully through the fine fabric of his suit, something that Will watches with unabashed appreciation, and his stride is long, something of a dancer’s poise in the way the well-shaped legs swing easily, confidently forward. He doesn’t notice Will where he leans in the hall, until suddenly he does, casting a curious glance his way. He looks like he might go about his business for a second, and Will’s heart leaps into his throat, but then something catches him. He pauses, cocks his head, and it reminds Will oddly of a snake tasting the air. He shivers, feels the reaction as a pulse through all of him, a tightening that hurts, somewhere deep.

“Hello there,” the man says. He takes a few strides in Will’s direction, carefully, as one might approach an animal, and for a second, through the haze, Will is ashamed, flinches away. The man stops where he is, sucks in his bottom lip as though reconsidering his approach.

“You look like you might need some help.”

Will nods instinctively, fights the growing urge to pounce on this man in the hall, while everyone else is in class. His eyes flick to the hands now held carefully neutral at the man’s sides, notices how large they are, how strong they look. He imagines one of them would span his lower back, if it was pressed, spread against the base of his spine, and he adds another new sensation to the list as his body responds enthusiastically to the image.

“You could say that,” he manages, his voice too shaky for the sarcasm to be as sharp as it should. The man’s lip twitches in appreciation nonetheless, and Will silently thanks him for it. He swallows, tries to clarify. “I… I need a ride home.”

“I am in possession of a car,” the man smiles, gestures towards the door leading out to the parking lot, “If you’re willing to ride with a stranger.”

There is something inherently dangerous about the offer, something inherently dangerous about this man. If Will’s mind was not such a tangle at the moment, if he was not being pulled by his instincts to throw himself into that danger, he would be reminding himself that he was on his way to the nurse, that this is exactly the kind of situation he’s been taught to avoid all his life, and beyond that, he might notice something about the man himself, some sharp edges and dark corners behind the smooth politeness. But as it is, he can barely think around the pound of blood that he can feel everywhere in his body, and when the man steps forward, extending his hand in greeting, his scent follows.

_ Alpha _ . 

Will breathes him in. He never understood the whole scent thing before, it struck him as kind of weird, like most of the crazy shit they learned in health class. He’d long resigned himself happily to being your everyday beta, puberty having come and gone with no warning signs of being either an alpha or omega. But suddenly, in one moment, he does. This man smells like musk, like some subtle, spicy cologne, and just beneath, the strong, warm scent of his skin. God, he smells like  _ home _ . Will wants to bury his nose in this man’s neck, fill himself with him.

Either there’s something of this on his face when he tilts his head up to meet the man’s eyes, or he has at last caught the scent of Will’s rapidly unfolding heat, because while he stands, hand extended, his lips part and his eyes grow dark.

_ What would he look like _ , Will wonders,  _ in the half-light of dawn, sleepy and satisfied, and thick inside me? _

This is a mistake. He should politely decline, should amble his way to the nurse before the next class lets out and fills the halls with teenagers, should take the medication and wait the next few days out in his room, shades drawn. 

He takes the man’s hand. It is as warm and dry as he’s sure his is damp.

“I’m Hannibal,” the man says. His eyes never leave Will, but he’s pulled his composure back, no longer looks like he’s having the exact same thoughts.

“Will,” he answers. 

 

Inside the car, it becomes almost unbearable. Will’s hands clench and unclench in his jeans in time to his body’s reaction to Hannibal’s scent, to the way his fingers hold the keys, everything is sensual and it’s  _ so fucking hot _ . Hannibal licks his lips as he backs out of the school parking lot, and Will almost moans out loud as the action calls to mind an image of that tongue on his throat, triggers another painful lurch inside him that doesn’t end, only peaks then plateaus. He bites the inside of his cheek, concentrates on the cool leather against his face. When he speaks, it’s an attempt at casual, but his voice is strained.

“So are you a teacher or something? You’re pretty young.”

Hannibal’s eyes flicker over him briefly, before returning to the road. His jaw is suddenly tight, and Will knows it’s because of the sweet, feverish scent filling the console. He spreads his legs a little wider in the seat, knowing as he does it that there’s no way Hannibal doesn’t notice. 

“I’m a surgeon,” he says, pulling them out onto the main road. Trees flicker past the passenger window, and houses. Will doesn’t notice them, he’s too busy trying to find the most comfortable way to sit as they travel over increasingly uneven pavement.

“Then what were you—”

“My sister is about your age,” Hannibal says, turning a wry look his way. “I was turning in some paperwork to enroll her for the next semester.”

Will nods like he’s processing any of this. His head is becoming quickly more foggy, his vision hazing over. He wants Hannibal to park the car, fuck him smashed against the tinted windows of the Bentley. For a while, his mind drifts somewhere totally unattached, lost in that fantasy. In it, Hannibal too is weak with need, pushing closer, pressing teeth and ragged breath.

“Is this your first heat?” Hannibal asks, the picture of polite curiosity. 

Returning from his thoughts, Will realizes they’re pulling up the long driveway to his house. He wets his lips, nods. He doesn’t trust himself to speak.

“It’s certainly making up for lost time,” Hannibal notes, taking a deep breath. Once again, there is that flicker of primal hunger, in the way his hands clutch the steering wheel, the way his lungs catch and his eyes close. But once again, it passes, or Hannibal gets it back in check. 

“Will you be alright?”

The gravel crunches beneath the wheels. Will’s dad’s car is not in the garage, it won’t be for hours still. There are several ways those hours could be spent, and it seems now that the most likely one is that he will lock his door and slip shaky fingers into himself, one after the other, try to sate the strange, painful emptiness he feels. He starts to nod, resigned, but Hannibal watches him like he’s waiting for something, and he has yet another really, truly, reckless thought.

“Come in?” he asks. He turns his eyes up to Hannibal who watches him solemnly.

“Will,” Hannibal cautions. His voice is lower, husky, and it sends chills through Will to hear his name murmured that way, “You don’t know what—”

Spurred by pure impulse, Will takes Hannibal’s hand in his, ignoring the sharp breath the other takes in, smooths it against his cheek. Hannibal’s thumb presses gently against his bottom lip, and he parts his mouth on it, sucks lightly and watches the way it makes his pupils dilate, his shoulders tense.

“Please,” Will asks.

 

They’re barely in the house when he pulls Hannibal to him by his tie, crushes their mouths together. He stumbles back against the door, feels his head clunk against it, the responding click of their teeth together, and he moans against lips and tongue. 

“My room,” he growls, and Hannibal doesn’t bristle at the command like some alphas would, merely chuckles warmly against his mouth.

“Patience.”

_ Fuck patience _ , Will wants to say, but the tongue pushing into his mouth, exploring, stops him, the hands that skim up his ribs and down his back to clutch at his ass take away the breath he would have used.

Suddenly, he’s hoisted up, by the hands that dig into the skin of his thighs, and carried up the stairs.

They stumble into his room just as haphazardly, and by the time they tumble to the bed, Will is peeling his own clothes off. He needs to feel skin on skin, and when he manages to pull the shirt from Hannibal, it’s hot between them, almost too much. He runs his hands across the broad chest that’s revealed, down the gentle slope of hard stomach, but he stops at the waistband. Here, he waits for a moment, unsure, and looks up at the man resting above him for guidance.

Hannibal’s hips shift forward, the hard ridge of his cock now evident against the patterned fabric of his pants. Will is honestly a little frightened by the prospect of it, it’s bigger than he thought it would be, and he swallows around another wave of crushing need that makes him light-headed.

“Fuck,” he murmurs. He wants that thing in him. Hannibal leans down to kiss him again, and this time it’s slower, liquid warmth. He pulls one of Will’s hands down between them, presses it to palm him through layers of fabric, and Will moans into the kiss. 

“What do you want, Will?” Hannibal says, emphasizing  _ you _ . His hand returns to guide their kiss, but Will’s stays where it is, slides an unsteady rhythm that forces Hannibal’s hips forward again, draws a low groan from him.

“I don’t know. Everything, anything.”

Hannibal laughs, a low warm thing that turns into a helpless noise at the end, as Will’s hand slides under his pants, under his briefs and touches hot, smooth skin. It’s fascinating, and different, somehow, than when Will has touched himself.

“I’m going to… have to ask you to be more specific than that,” he pants against Will’s neck. Curiosity pushes Will on, and a burgeoning sense of power as he watches the alpha react to him, to his touch. “There are ways I could… work you through this without—”

Will shakes his head, drags his hand in a long, steady stroke that makes Hannibal’s voice break halfway through his sentence.

“I want you to fuck me.”

That seems to break whatever bit of self-control Hannibal had still been clinging to. He growls, low in his chest, and hands fist in Will’s jeans, yank them sharply from his hips. Will gasps, and the dull throb within him becomes a steady roar, unbearable. His thighs are slick already, and when Hannibal nudges his legs wider around him, he rolls his hips up hopefully, mindlessly. Hannibal’s hands are pressing him down into the mattress, Hannibal’s fingers are sliding into him, and his eyes roll up at the sudden intrusion, at once strange and amazing. The noise he makes in his throat is barely human.

“Oh god,  _ please _ ,” he chokes, hardly knowing what he’s asking. Thick fingers push in and slide out, easily now, curl to press at some spot inside him at the same time as another hand envelops his cock, and it feels so good it makes his throat close and his heart stop for a moment. He thinks he might come, here, with Hannibal’s breath hot against his thigh and just his fingers in him, but the shuddery feeling passes, punctuated with a soft, frustrated moan.

“Turn over,” Hannibal says, his voice low. He’s dragging his pants off now, leaving Will feeling cold where there had been touch, and the order draws another shiver through him. He rolls over, unsure how to rest, but the second Hannibal’s hands find his hips, he arches his spine in reaction. There’s a rumble of appreciation from Hannibal, behind him, and for a surreal moment, the fever seems to break, Will’s head becomes clear and cogent, and he almost laughs as he realizes what he’s about to do.

_ “The first time you pair with someone is an important decision,” the words echo, “It can be a very intimate experience, so you should chose your partner carefully. Someone who cares about you, someone you trust.” _

Teeth against the soft skin of his ass, and a thumb pressing into him  _ just _ so lurch him back into incoherency, and he pushes back against the sensation, seeking more.

Lips then, up the length of his spine, and Hannibal’s warm weight follows. By the time he’s reached to press kisses against the thin skin of his neck, they are completely flush, and Will swallows as he feels the hard weight of Hannibal’s cock slide between his cheeks.

One hand strokes through his hair, the other guides his hips a little higher, and Hannibal murmurs his name against his skin. It’s intoxicating, he wants more of it, he wants more of  _ Hannibal _ . He might mumble something to that effect, because Hannibal laughs again, that low pleased rumble against his shoulder, and Will’s hips buck up,  _ needing. _

The feeling of Hannibal pressing, thick and hot and blunt against him, races his pulse. For a moment, it doesn’t seem possible, it  _ hurts _ even, but somehow that adds to the sharp pleasure that rolls its way through him, through his core, pulses into his cock. Will makes a small, broken sound as Hannibal pushes again, gently, and a little more of him slides in. Then, suddenly, Hannibal rocks his hips forward with a groan and Will’s mouth goes slack, his vision whites out as he’s cleaved into. He is stretched to his absolute limit, full of Hannibal, and it feels impossibly good, to the point of pain, to have that thick weight inside him. He’s scared that, if he moves, something will surely tear, but he can’t help rocking his hips back onto the man behind him, riding out the red feeling that leaves him breathless and shaky, and when Hannibal moans, lurches forward again, driving deeper, it peaks and snaps. Will comes like he has never come before, a sudden, almost violent rush of pleasure that feels like it will never end, that spools wetly against his sheets and shudders through him, where he can feel Hannibal pulsing, close to it himself. 

His heart pounds in his chest, and small, desperate sounds leave his lips as his orgasm fades into a dull, manageable throb. Hannibal’s hands are steady, smoothing over his sides and his hips, but he does not otherwise move.

“Shit,” Will gasps at last, “I’m sorry, that was—”

Hannibal cuts him off with a soft sound of amusement, and they stay like that for a minute.

“We can stop now, if—”

“No,” Will manages. The feeling of Hannibal withdrawing wakes the same, pleasurable itch all over again, and he tenses, enjoys the helpless sound it pulls from Hannibal’s lips. “No, I… I want to feel you come.”

Will does twice more before that moment arrives, and when Hannibal finally does reach that point, pounding hard into Will by now, reckless and desperate and on the edge of rationality, he is damn close to a fourth, moaning incoherencies as the swell of Hannibal’s knot slams against him. When he eventually takes it, with a tandem sound of satisfaction from both of them, it’s only seconds before Hannibal fills him with his release, and the sudden hot rush of it draws Will over the edge yet again. He nearly blacks out when his body tries to tense over the pressure of the knot, long past the threshold where there was any distinction between pleasure and pain, and he gasps, briefly unable to think.

After, they lay on the mess of his sheets, still connected, and Will calms beneath the feeling of Hannibal’s hands tracing his skin, reverently. The first, heady stage of his heat has passed, leaving him only vaguely wanting, heavy with aches, and most of all, exhausted. There’s something else, too, something soft and foreign, a curling tendril of emotion in his chest. When Hannibal strokes sweat-damp curls from his cheek, it tugs at this new feeling, and he sighs, leans into the touch.

The golden light of the day has faded into the red of sunset, painting his walls with color, their skin with artificial flush. Hannibal is quiet, and Will thinks, strangely, that he can feel what he’s thinking; a hum of connection between them gives away the soft, solemn contemplation the other is lost in.

“We should leave,” Will realizes suddenly. It’s been hours, and headlights might flicker up the driveway at any moment. Hannibal nods, presses his lips carefully over the teeth marks he’d left at the nape of Will’s neck.

“We should.”

It’s different to hear the word from Hannibal’s mouth, and it tugs again at that tight feeling in his chest.  _ We _ . They will get up in a few minutes, they will dress and clean themselves up as best as they can, but for now, Will lets himself settle back into the warmth of arms.

_ “And most of all,” the teacher says, addressing a class who has long lost interest, “Be very careful  in choosing with whom to pair, because if you Bond—” this word, at last, catches the attention of a few, heads turning sharply, “it can be almost impossible to break.” _


	2. Baltimore, MD

Sixteen years later

 

“The thing you have to understand about all this is—”

He doesn’t meet her eyes, though that is nothing unusual, from what she knows of him. He pushes his glasses up his nose, by the side of the frames, and sighs, looking profoundly uncomfortable.

“What do you want me to understand, Will?”

He starts at the sound of his name, as though it reaches him in a way that all the sympathy and smiles in the world would not. She cuts straight to him because she prides herself on her ability to know what a patient needs, and what Will Graham needs is direction.

She folds her hands in her lap, waits.

“I—” he begins again, leans back in the chair. He wants to appear at ease, and if she was not quite as observant as she is, he might have fooled her. “—am not as damaged as Jack Crawford thinks I am.”

She gives him a few seconds to let the words settle into the air, to taste how flat they sound, how false. The gauzy curtains of her office flutter a little beneath the air conditioning, and she cocks her head at him coolly, watches him frown and consider his words.

“Why do you think he thinks that?” she asks, when it’s time. His frown deepens.

“He referred me to you.”

“That’s not uncommon, in your line of work,” she says, watching him as she carefully chooses her next words. “Particularly in the case of someone with your background.”

He bristles visibly, and it takes her some restraint not to smile. She really should not toy with him, but the day is long and he makes it too easy.

“My background?” he repeats. The words come out sour, as though he wants to spit them out rather than say them.

“Someone with a violent history,” she clarifies calmly. “You said you left the police force after there was an incident; a stabbing?”

His shoulders ease only slightly at the realization that she is not making a reference to his sex, or a judgement about his unattached status. She personally thinks that what she is implying isn’t all that much less offensive, but Will Graham does not seem bothered by the idea that someone might consider him violent.

“If you can call it that,” he scoffs. “Torn rotator cuff, and a few stitches. And that’s not why Jack wants me in therapy anyway—if it is, he’s almost ten years too late.”

“Then why,” she proceeds, “does he want you in therapy?”

There’s silence. He’s built his own trap and stepped into it, and he looks like he realizes it too. It’s hard for her not to draw the analogy she naturally wants to—to consider him as prey—but she tries, because the impulse is instinctual and banal, and because Will Graham is anything but a victim.

He laughs. It’s not a pretty sound, but a rough burst of breath. He’s again looking at everything but her eyes, and he runs a hand across the rasp of his beard.

“Because… I see too much of what he asks me to look at.”

He is her last appointment of the day, and although he at least presents more of a challenge than most of her patients, her mind drifts longingly to the chardonnay waiting at home. Their session is almost over, and she has yet to get anything out of him beyond a continued reluctance to be here, and the guardedness of an omega who chooses to remain unmated.

As if she would be interested. She bites down a smirk at the very notion.

“You’ve said that you often consult with Jack Crawford. You’ve helped him in this capacity for years. So why now?”

He’s stood, walked around to the bookshelf on the far wall. She bites down on another ugly instinct as he runs a finger along their spines. He’s rude, certainly, but that’s no excuse for the desire she feels to knock him to the ground, to pin the wrist of the offending hand beneath her heel. For all her instincts, she is not an animal.

When he does answer, he’s facing away, and it takes her a moment to process the words.

“I’m… considering going back on suppressants.”

A few blinks later, and she’s composed herself. It’s not so much that the information has surprised her; she’s of course noticed how carefully he schedules his appointments, and she’s sensed the lingering fever-sweetness on him before. It’s more the blasé way he opens the subject, after all of his dancing around it.

“That’s a very personal choice,” she says, dryly. “Why does Jack have an interest in it?”

Again, the laugh that sounds like the scatter of leaves.

“Jack has an interest in a lot of things he has no business in.”

When she doesn’t comment, but waits, Will sighs and walks back around to the chair his bag is slumped against. He doesn’t sit, but rests an arm against the back, fiddles with something on his watch.

“I’m different when I’m on the medication. Not as sharp. Which suits me just fine, but sits poorly with Jack when he’s got a psychopath he needs to profile and I’m not on speed-dial.”

It’s not that he’s not pretty, she thinks distantly. She’s sure that beneath all the department store plaid and khaki, there is potential. He has a pleasant, if frustrating mouth, and eyes that leave him looking younger than his actual years. She has long held the opinion that, given the right coaxing, Will could be something very near to beautiful, but he carries something with him that makes him slow to trust and quick to snap. Undesirable traits, in an omega. She doubts that he would let anyone get close enough to see the softer sides of him, and she doubts many have tried.

“Tell me, Dr. DuMaurier, what are your personal beliefs on the subject?” he asks, as though he can sense the turn of her thoughts. He at last meets her eyes; not in acquiescence, but in challenge. A smug smile rests uneasily in the corner of his mouth as he waits for her to answer, and again she thinks how innately wrong it feels to her to allow him to test her this way.

“On suppressants?” she asks, brows raised. “Or on your choice to refuse them?”

He flinches almost unnoticeably, but licks his lips, begins pacing the room again.

“There are a lot of strong opinions out there. I’m just curious what kind of bias I’m dealing with.”

“My opinions don’t matter, Will. I’m here to help you understand yours.”

A third laugh, which is surely some kind of record, even if they are caustic with sarcasm, and he scuffs his foot along the carpet.

“Yeah, that’s what I thought. There’s a reason Jack didn’t send me back to Dr. Bloom: he didn’t want a commiserator. He wanted someone more conventional.”

He has her hackles up, and she finds herself disliking him more with each passing moment. He has a preternatural tendency to bring out the parts of herself she has taken a long time to prune and shape from the calm, controlled persona that she puts out to the world.

“You assume that, because I’m an alpha, I hold conventional attitudes about suppressants?”

“I assume that, because Jack sent me to you, _he_ assumes you hold the opinion that best suits him,” Will snaps. He seems offended by the suggestion that he too, has biases. “ _Doctor_.”

She taps her pen against the notepad in her lap and considers—once, twice, again.

“Why did you agree to begin therapy with me?”

He doesn’t answer, only looks down sullenly at his hands, and she takes it as invitation to continue.

“Your presence is not court-ordered, nobody forced you. And yet, here you are, in my waiting room each week.”

She allows herself a subtle smile, thinking he’ll appreciate her honesty,

“...Albeit, not without a certain level of hostility.”

His mouth twitches, but he says nothing for a stretch. She is patient though, and waits it out.

“I uh,” he says, and it’s almost a whisper. “I didn’t see enough. Last time. People got hurt.”

He removes his glasses, rubs at his eyes.

“Do you feel responsibility for their deaths?” she asks, genuinely curious. This has turned out to be the most productive session they’ve had to date, and she re-evaluates her choice of evening plans. Perhaps she’ll go out, afterall. She feels invigorated.

“I feel like I killed them,” he admits, his voice quiet, low. “I close my eyes at night and see their faces, I list their names.”

She considers him carefully.

“Your choice reflects more than what it appears on the surface,” she guesses. “It’s not only about the medication; if you go back on it, you won’t return to fieldwork.”

He nods, turns away again so that she can’t see his face. She doesn’t need to.

“I can’t. I can’t have their lives laid at my feet every time—every time I’m wrong.”

She notices the way his words stumble, and she notes it for later, but doesn’t pursue. They must leave some things for next week. She takes a measured breath and weighs her options carefully.

“I can’t write you a prescription, but I can make you a referral to someone who can, with my professional approval. I’ll leave it to you what to do from there.”

He swallows, seemingly taken aback, and nods again, even flashes her a flickering attempt at a smile.

“Thank you, I—I appreciate it.”

With the root of the problem finally unearthed, they have only minutes left of their session. She watches him gather his things while she fills out the appropriate form, still wondering about the words he hadn’t said, about what really makes him see blood on his hands.

“You know, usually by your age, they don’t recommend suppressants long-term,” she says, punctuating by tearing the form from the pad.

“I am aware,” he says, sourly.

“I certainly have no archaic pretensions about mates and families,” she allows, looking pointedly around the office, at its tasteful, but carefully impersonal choices, “but my attitude is somewhat... unconventional.”

She hands him the form, and smiles wryly. He takes it, silently, and folds it into the outer pocket of his bag. They are poised, in the doorway, for farewells.

“Were you never interested in finding yours?” she asks. It’s personal, and accusatory, and meant to throw him off. What she doesn’t anticipate is the flicker of pain that crosses his face, the nearly visceral recoil in his stance before he gets a handle on it and settles back into sullen, closed-off normalcy.

Curious.

“Session’s over, Bedelia,” he says, no acknowledgment of the moment that just passed between them. “You shouldn’t work off the clock.”

She smiles, sees him out. And when she locks the office door behind him, she pours herself a congratulatory glass, feeling she’s earned it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ***Author's notes, if you're the kind that watches the commentary***
> 
> Firstly, thank you to everyone who commented, suggested, kudo'd, and bookmarked the first chapter of this. I truly had not considered taking this story further, but the unexpected encouragement I received is what made me ask some of the questions that led me to writing the next ~5k words. 
> 
> Secondly, [this primer](http://archiveofourown.org/works/403644/chapters/665489) by noraBombay provided some of the much-needed (and hilarious) omegaverse facts and questions that I used to structure my interpretation of the A/B/O world, once I realized that I had decided to embark on a multi-chapter omegaverse fic and knew basically nothing about the trope. I highly recommend it, and I'm indebted to the research that went into it.
> 
> Lastly, I know there are probably about 10,000 fics out there with the title "Wicked Game," but it truly is a perfect song, in any version. For this fic in particular, I recommend [this cover](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uUaRPpnsfb4) by James Vincent McMorrow. Reasons will become more clear going forward.
> 
> I hope you do choose to go forward. I know that this chapter is wildly different from the first, but I promise there is far more rolling around in sheets to come, not just world-building and plot-teasing. Though mildly sexist, ridiculously bored Bedelia was a treat to write.
> 
> —Q


	3. Strange.

“Ah, a little—”

The sound Will makes is somewhere between a wince and a moan, as Hannibal pushes into him, and he clutches at the arms that are braced on either side of him. It’s amazing to him, in a dull, distant way, how he can be so tired, and yet it can still feel so fucking good. He presses their mouths together to communicate this, and Hannibal sighs into the kiss in drowsy agreement, rolls his hips again. Maybe this feeling will never end.

 

“Watch how she plucks at the nest; they are readying to go South.”

The air is cool on Will’s still-fevered cheeks, but it feels good after so long in the warm dark of the bedroom. The moment of cogency is welcome too, but likely won’t last long, he has learned. Their hands are linked, fingers twined loosely, and it does not yet occur to him that this should be strange.

It has to Hannibal. However, he has elected to shelve the thought until his head is fully clear again. It is not often that he has been caught up in another like this, instincts overwhelming logic, and he intends to explore the novelty to completion.

The sun is slanting gold through the branches above them, the sounds of leaves rustling and the late-afternoon hum of insects speaking of an autumn that has not yet fully arrived. They’ve meandered off the path at some point, but it’s Hannibal’s property, and Will has never felt a particular fear of the forest. With Hannibal beside him, pointing things out in the pleasant rumble of his voice, it feels impossible to be anything but content.

“She?” Will asks, quirks a brow, “How do you know?”

The bird in question is small, dark, spotted. She eyes them curiously from her perch, head cocked, and Hannibal looks at Will, a smile softening his features.

“Look at her beak,” he says, his voice pitched low so as not to startle her. The way he’s poised reminds Will of something, but he couldn’t say what.

The light changes his eyes from their usual deep brown to almost caramel, gilds his unusual features, and Will looks away, the heat in his cheeks rising. He turns to where Hannibal points instead.

“It’s... yellow?”

Hannibal nods.

“The males’ are blue at the base, in the summer months.”

“That’s it?” Will says, unimpressed.

Hannibal chuckles, and the bird rustles her feathers, gives an alarmed chirp before darting higher up into the branches. Will tries to track her through the bramble, but loses her when the sun, yellow-orange as it is becomes blinding, and Hannibal pulls gently at his hand, back in the direction of the path.

“And other, minor, physiological differences,” he says, something warm and amused in his voice. “But yes, they are hardly opposing sides of a coin.”

Watching his shoulders, his careful stride through the underbrush, Will realizes what he was reminded of before. Hannibal had been poised as if to spring, like a cat watching prey.

 

The glow of the fire warms the skin of his bare back, even as hands raise goosebumps across it. He’s straddling Hannibal so that every shift of his hips presses him deeper, spreads him further, and the sounds that leave his mouth are soft and broken the closer he struggles. His nails are leaving little crescent-shaped cuts in broad shoulders, but Hannibal looks up at him like he’s the only thing in the world, kisses him like he’s the most wonderful thing he’s ever tasted. He grows impatient with the slow, shuddering rhythm of hips Will has them in, and drives up, hard, so he can feel the swell towards the base of him.  

“I—I can’t,” Will gasps against his lips, but the pressure is insistent, and beneath him Hannibal is heavy-eyed and short of breath, so he tries anyway, slides a little closer still, and lets his weight press him down onto the knot. It hurts, but it’s a dull, good sort of ache, and with another careful inch, another gasped breath, it’s inside him. His hands shake with the effort, with the sharp spike of pleasure it drives through him. Hannibal’s mouth is slack now, against his neck, and Will runs hands through his hair, murmurs encouragement against his skin while they shudder closer together.

 

When Will wakes sometime in the third night, he knows that the heat is passed. It is not a sudden shift, more like the absence of a pain that has bothered for days. He can’t pinpoint the moment when it ended, maybe it did without his noticing. It just occurs to him, in the quiet of the bedroom, that it did. He can no longer find the sore to worry at.

Hannibal’s form is warm, curled at his back, an arm resting loosely across his waist. Will listens to his breath, a slow, shallow in and out that sounds of sleep and finds that it comforts him. The realization of what he’s done is just entering the prelude, and if there will be alarm, in the days to come, it has yet to arrive. Calls and excuses had been made. He will have to face this new facet of himself come morning, but for the moment, there’s nothing else he can do. The room is blue and grey shadows, night having brought rain that taps softly at the windows, the roof, and Will waits in this drowsy quiet to see if sleep will come back.

Of course, it doesn’t. He eases out from under an arm, winces when he sits up and every muscle wrenches with some kind of ache. Hannibal does not stir, but stills, his breath stopping for a moment, and Will knows that he’s awake. There are many things he doesn’t know about the man beside him, but he has learned the language of his lips, his eyes, his breath. He does not wait to see if Hannibal will continue to feign sleep, shuts the door to the room with a soft click.

The house feels unfamiliar to him, as if he’s seeing it for the first time. In a way, he figures, he is. This is the first time he’s looked at it without the low thrum of the heat behind his eyes, drawing his focus inward and making details a minor concern. In the silver of moonlight, the corners seem high and the halls endless. He is keenly aware of the space, seems to know where to go, to find the kitchen. He drinks from the tap, one glass then another, and leans against the island beneath hanging pots and pans, watching the squirming shadows the rain draws on the opposite wall. Hannibal had cooked for him in this kitchen, several times in the last days, and they had talked, sipped wine—something Will had never had, and did not like at first. Will knows all these things, can flip through the memories, but it all seems distant and a little unreal. He had been himself, but he had been a different, bolder version of himself, one that was not afraid to ask for what he wanted, one who pulled a face at his first sip of wine but drank the second anyway, tried to let the warm, red taste settle on his tongue so he could know what it was that made Hannibal close his eyes in appreciation.

He leaves the glass on the counter, to prove that he was there.

Back upstairs, Hannibal is unmoving, but watches him with narrow, thoughtful eyes as he shrugs out of his shirt and slides back into satin sheets. He does not reach for Will, to pull him back into the embrace they’d slept in before, but waits, tensed.

It occurs to Will that maybe Hannibal had not had much more control than he, and it’s in this thought that he at last finds the tug of guilt he’d expected to feel since waking.

“Where’s all of your furniture?” he asks, pushing aside the cold coiling in his stomach, focusing instead on the new observations he’d collected since his head had cleared. He settles close enough to feel the warmth of skin, but obeys the new boundaries they’d silently laid, does not reach—though it hums through him, though he wants.

Hannibal blinks at him in the dark, then smiles.

“I was wondering when you would notice,” he chuckles, his voice thick with sleep. “Though, given the circumstances…”

There is a charged silence, and Hannibal shifts to free an arm from under the pillow, rests it between them instead, his hand beneath his cheek.

“I am in the process of moving.”

Will does not have a name for the feeling that lurches unpleasantly in his chest.

“Out, or in?”

“In,” Hannibal says, a soft tug of lips. “Many of my things have yet to arrive from Paris, but I wanted to prepare the house before Mischa’s arrival.”

His sister. Will remembers, now. They’d spoken about all of this, sprawled across a couch under the glow of firelight in the nearly empty study. The warmth had felt good, after the chill of outside, his body still too-hot and oversensitive. Will had told him about the easy rhythm of the Gulf, and the fireflies in the grass, and Hannibal had smiled, said there were fireflies where he came from too.

The intimacy of the memory makes the tense pause they rest in now all the more apparent. Hannibal is still waiting, all patience, though for what, Will couldn’t say.

“I don’t—”

His throat seizes on the words, and a small, frustrated sound is all that comes out instead. He feels intensely foolish, and deeply afraid that by flinging himself at the man beside him, he’d crossed some line. Hell, he doesn’t know anything about how this works, beyond movies and cafeteria gossip.

And there’s more. It’s not just the potential of embarrassment that’s making him squirm, there’s some deep current of desire to stay here, in this room with Hannibal, and a fear that as soon as they talk about it the spell will somehow be broken, and they will not see each other again. If he could pinpoint where exactly in him this yearning feeling is coming from, he would cut it out of him, approach it only carefully and clinically, from a distance. It aches, in a way that’s new and old. It’s almost a nostalgia, a pull in the pit of his stomach—a homesickness.

He reaches a hand out, tentatively, unsure exactly what it is he means. Hannibal does not flinch back, but he also does not close the space. Only watches, with an open, curious expression, to see what Will might do.

His fingers trace the warm, solid line of his cheek, his jaw, his lips. Hannibal’s eyes close, as they had when he’d tasted the wine, an expression both revelatory and reverent.

“I don’t know what the protocol is,” Will finishes, his touch still lingering. The skin beneath his fingertips is rough with stubble, then soft as he presses against a bottom lip, “in this situation.”

The lips beneath his fingers curve into a smile, eyes crinkle against soft blue backdrop.

“I am no less novice than you,” Hannibal says, “— where this particular situation is concerned. I have never succumbed to a rut before.”

There's a pause, and Will attempts not to look surprised. He knows almost nothing about how this all works; he's heard the word, but has only the barest understanding of what it means, let alone that it's supposed to be something controllable. Hannibal watches him in the dark, his eyes nearly black, and when he speaks again, it's quieter.

“I believe it can be whatever we want it to.”

Will kisses him. It’s a soft pressure at first, a question, just to hear the way his breath will leave him, to feel the way his body coils in response. He knows then, as Hannibal’s hands find his waist, that this is not unwelcome, that whatever pull he’d felt had not faded with his waning fever. The relief in this makes him light headed, and he pulls them closer, parts his lips to let Hannibal’s tongue press hot into his mouth, the feeling a steadily growing roar for closeness, for contact, and he follows it. It's dizzying—the press of Hannibal's lips to his, the soft rumble of pleasure he makes when Will touches him, it makes sense in a way nothing else does. He breaks away, breathless.

“What if…”

Hannibal pulls him easily to rest atop his chest, legs tangling, and Will gasps against his mouth as he presses his hips up, grinding them together.

“—what if I don’t know,”

He follows Hannibal's lead, shifts cotton against silk, and warm skin beneath. They barely part for air, and when Hannibal’s hands grab his ass, pull him tight against him, he cries out from the pleasure of it.

“what I— _ah_ —want this to be?”

Hannibal makes a thoughtful sound in his throat in answer, one that gets cut off when Will skims a hand between them, across stomach and down, ends in a sharp breath instead. He licks his lips and tries again, this time with a smile playing at the corners of his mouth.

“There is time to decide yet.”

Will is sore and exhausted, but when a hand slides beneath fabric, fingers press into the cleft there, press _into him_ , his eyes roll back on a moan that sounds like Hannibal’s name. He rests his forehead into the space between Hannibal’s neck and shoulder, frees himself from the last bit of fabric keeping them apart, and then it’s just skin and sweat, it’s just his hands between them, and Hannibal working a rhythm inside him that makes speech unlikely.

There is heat between them, but it no longer feels like fever.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Quick note—I will try to make the distinction between the two timelines clear within the text, but if it is ever unclear, the chapter titles can serve as a clue to when it is set. If you see only a place name as a title, it will always be the future (like the scene with Will and Bedelia speaking), all other chapters will be set in this main timeline.  
> Sorry if that's confusing!  
> —Q


	4. Moment to Moment

Three weeks later, and it has finally begun to feel normal.

He tells Bev a much watered-down version of events, only because she annoys it out of him, and because she’s the only person in the world besides Hannibal who knows that he’s presented. Well, he supposes bitterly, and anyone who can scent the difference.

“ _ Ten years _ older?” she crows. “William Fitzgerald Graham—”

“That’s not my—”

“And he’s a doctor. I mean, that’s just—”

“Surgeon. In his first year of—wait, why am I telling you this?”

He leans his head against the passenger window and shoots a sideways glare at her. Her eyes are barely flickering between the road and him, she’s positively gleeful. He closes his eyes, tries to fight the flush he knows is spreading across his cheeks.

“Are you gonna see him again?”

Will has seen Hannibal since, several times in fact. He’s spent long afternoons at the house when Hannibal’s not working—exploring the woods, helping with small chores, trying to learn to cook. So far he’s set off the smoke alarm twice, but he makes a mean pancake. Even Hannibal had to admit so, with a small twist of lip. They played the baby grand in the parlor too, until they didn’t anymore, and he ended up with rug burn on his knees. 

He is silent on the subject though, opting instead for an ambivalent shrug.

Bev shakes her head, looking utterly bemused. Will wishes they would pull into his driveway already.

“So what, are you gonna get to skip school once a month, so you can—”

Will’s groan cuts her off, he rolls his head back and it thunks uselessly against the back of the seat,

“Can we—can we please not have this conversation?”

She has the good grace to look penitent. For a second at least. He doesn’t go so far as to think that she’s run out of rude questions about his biology, but the tilt of her head, the way she bites her bottom lip promises that they will at least remain in her head until tomorrow’s ride home.

“And it’s not every month,” he grumbles petulantly. That, she likes, and responds with her hearty laughter.

“Alright, so tell me more about this Dr. Lecter then.”

Will thinks.

_ He notices the smallest details, change on a microscale. His hands are strong and quick. He looks at me and I feel it in those soft hairs on the back of my neck. _

All the first things that come to mind are stupid.

“He… cooks. He has a sister. She’s sixteen.”

Bev spares him a glance,

“Yikes. That’s awkward, don’t you think? She’s almost as old as you.”

“I hadn’t thought about it.”

He has. He’s worried about it, in fact, the more he finds out about her from Hannibal, which so far isn’t much. But he talks about her in the soft, cautious way that you talk about things you want to keep to yourself, and so Will has not pushed, and she remains a mystery. He knows that she paints, that she plays piano, and that she likes France but misses home, more than Hannibal does. He still hasn’t told Will where that is. It’s another thing that fills his voice with a quiet kind of sadness.

Will misses him.

They crunch up the driveway finally.

“Well, see you tomorrow, Romeo.” Bev sighs as he gets out. She bites her lip on a smile, “Or should I call you  _ Juliet _ ?”

“Fuck off,” he says, slamming the door on her smirk. He doesn’t let her see that he’s smiling too.

  
  


Will lays on his stomach, a pillow under his hips. If he had the frame of mind to feel self conscious he would, his legs spread as they are—he’s vulnerable, too open. 

As it is, he is covered in goosebumps, the electric thrill of anticipation making all of these other sensations minor. His body hums for Hannibal’s touch, and it’s given only sparingly, as the other paces around him, trails his fingers here, kisses there. He’s been instructed not to move, and his hands shake, but he tries to obey. It feels like hours since he’d undressed, laid himself out how Hannibal asked, and he’s nearing a point where he  _ wants  _ so badly it almost feels like the heat had.

A brush of fingers down his spine, and he cries out, arches, the touch withdraws.

“I should like to draw you, like this,” Hannibal says, a warm current of amusement in his voice. His lips are at Will’s neck, he drags his teeth lightly over thin skin.

“Don’t you fucking—” Will growls, “ _ dare  _ get out a pencil right now.”

The laughter that gusts against his neck is accompanied by the skim of fingers down, between his legs, and Will’s breath fails. There’s no pressure though, just a teasing kind of touch that’s there and then not, and he groans, presses his too-hot face into the pillow.

“Well,” Hannibal says wryly. Eyes closed, Will feels his weight join him on the bed, and his heart skips again. “That’s quite the command.”

Hannibal leaves him to squirm for a minute, not touching, just watching, and just when Will is about to peek over his shoulder, a hand presses him down, between his shoulderblades.

“Trust me.” Hannibal says. It sounds like a question. Will, with his ass in the air, legs sprawled open does not see much of an option, but he nods anyway, hoping and fearing at once. It swirls through him, a strange cocktail of emotions, nerves strung tight and ready to snap.

Hannibal’s hands lift his hips, and another pillow is placed beneath him. All of this is done with gentle precision. Will wonders if Hannibal is hard, like he is, full and aching in his pants. He might make a sound of pleasure thinking about this.

Settled against the pillows, he feels hot breath against him, and he tenses a little, through his spine, prepared for teeth. 

Instead, he is spread. Hands pressing gently, but firmly, and then the breath is  _ there _ , and he does tense, as self-consciousness finally rears its head and roars louder than his want.

“Hannibal, what a—”

Then there is tongue. Hannibal gives him no warning, just sensation, and his mind crashes. After hours of wanting, the pressure of it against him, twisting into him is almost too much, too suddenly, and he can’t even find breath for sound. 

Hannibal draws back, ghosts his lips once more across him.

“Shall I stop?”

He feels the words against wet, tender skin, and there’s something so new in it, so foreign, that he begins to feel the impatient pound of climax through his blood. He gasps, shakes his head, and it starts again. This time, Hannibal is slow, devout. When he pushes his tongue in, he moans and Will feels it vibrate through him.

“Ah, fuck—”

Downstairs, Hannibal’s phone rings. He ignores it. He is otherwise occupied.

“Hannibal, please, I need—”

Will doesn’t know what he needs. If someone asked him his own name, he might not be able to articulately answer that. 

Mercifully, Hannibal is much better at reading him than he is.

A finger replaces tongue, another, and together they twist, split, spread him, and he gasps into the pillow. He hears the sound of a zipper, can feel the heat from Hannibal’s cock, though he makes no move yet. Will takes a third finger, despite the stretch he begins to really feel, and he pushes his hips back on shaking legs, so he can feel Hannibal deeper.

“Will,” Hannibal murmurs, and his voice is thick with that sound that means he’s quickly losing himself to instinct. His fingers withdraw, and he nudges Will’s hip gently, rolls him off the pillows, onto his back.

Will’s view is much improved, as he takes in the heavy-lidded look of want on Hannibal’s face. He reaches out, and Hannibal lowers himself carefully over him, so they’re chest to chest, hips pressed flush, and Will slides careful, hungry hands over Hannibal’s sides. Their cocks brush between them, and it sparks another current in him, a soft moan and a jerk of his hips.

They kiss, a languid, full kiss, and Hannibal eases one of Will’s legs up, over his shoulder. Pinioned like this, beneath lips and weight, when fingers press into him again, he hisses at the stretch, but Hannibal works him patiently until it doesn’t hurt, only aches for more.

The first, slow slide of Hannibal into him seems like it will never end, thicker towards the base, though he doesn’t knot. It takes a few heady minutes, a few tries, but eventually, they are flush, Hannibal is deep, deep, in him, and in this tight, tense moment, they stay until he murmurs a plea against Hannibal’s lips, and they move together.

Will is close almost immediately, after so long, but Hannibal seems to know exactly when to stop to draw it out, to move them slow and languid, then hard, driving him to the sharp edge of pleasure again. They are pressed so close together, Will can feel every change in Hannibal’s pulse, and he knows the moment when he too is close, his face buried against Will’s neck, his breath coming in sharp bursts as he rocks hard into him. Will lets it take him then, the edge he’d been walking for hours, and it’s not just pleasure, sharp and overwhelming, from where he feels Hannibal to his core but  _ relief,  _ as it finally snaps through him, and he almost cries. Hannibal touches his cheek, looks at him in that near-religious way, and fills him with his own orgasm, a few final thrusts and a soft, strangled kind of sound.

 

“What do you know about Bonds?”

The other end is near silent, though he can hear the rhythm of her breath. If Hannibal closes his eyes, he can picture her, place her here in the room with him, trailing her slender hands across the walls. He can almost catch the faint scent of cloves, if he tries.

“I know that many people do not believe they exist,” she says finally, and there’s something tight and tired in the words, “...and I know that they are not to be trifled with.”

“If one was, however, in the trifling mood,” he says, enjoying the vision of her, the way she stops suddenly, her back to him, the curve of her cheek over her shoulder. She has always watched over him—both of them—but she has always done so with a wary sort of awareness. She will never trust him, truly. “Then how would one go about forming one?”

Again, there is silence. Lady Murasaki is nothing if not patient, and she is just as cautious with words as she would be with any weapon.

“Hannibal… what have you done?”

He smiles and leans back in the chair by the phone. He is sketching idly in the margins of the notepad; a fox and her kit in the snow. 

“I’m not sure, just yet. I’ve met someone. It’s perhaps not as serious as all that, but I am curious about the extent of his effect on me. It’s…”

He leaves the phone in the crook between his shoulder and chin, goes to the refrigerator.

“ _ —disarming _ , I think is the verbiage I would use.”

He smiles a little as he imagines Will’s reaction to being called such a word, the furrowing of brows and jutting of chin. He is keenly aware of his absence, as he always is, although it has only been days since they last saw each other. It aches distantly, for now, but more so with each creeping hour. He wonders if Will feels the same, if he lays in bed at night and wants for him. 

This too, is a pleasing image. He ghosts it away though; it would be rude, after all, to not give his aunt his full attention.

She sighs, away from the phone, but not so much as to not be heard.

“Hannibal, it is not a good time for this. She’s beginning to talk about leaving sooner, she misses you. I’m not sure that I can—”

The pain in her voice is like a sharp note, keen and telling. He makes a soft sound of understanding, closes the door and goes back to the seat, the little notepad.

“I know. I will do what I can.”

“I know that you have given up much for your sister,” there’s a softness. She loves him, still, even in her quiet, distant way. “Too much burden has fallen to you too often, and too early. But I would never ask anything of you that I did not believe you were capable of.”

In his mind, he drapes her in the green. He always loved that color on her, the way it looked against her flushed skin after hot water. She does not look that way now. She is pale, and drawn, even in his mind. 

“I will take care of her,” he promises. In the space of the silence that follows, the vision nods her head.

“Good. She needs you.”


	5. Springfield, Virginia

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *heads up for some pretty serious dubcon here*

 

Springfield, Virginia

 

The bar is as shitty a place as any, but it has a certain shabby, weather-beaten charm that serves Will’s purposes. From the gum, cracked and browning on the floor, to the chipped and battered pool cues, to the corner jukebox that’s seen better days— _charm,_ he thinks wryly, is a good word for it.

But he’s not here for the atmosphere tonight. The bartender, a tired woman who is almost pretty in the near-dark of the bar knows him, nods when he walks in, brings him a whiskey, neat, when she gets a chance.

“Hey there, fisherman. It’s been a while,” she says, leaning over the bar. This close, he can see her fake eyelashes, the creases that betray her age, but her smile is friendly, flirty even, and it provokes one from him in return—distracted, flickering, yes, but genuine. He still gets nervous, after all this time.

Until, of course, the moment he isn’t anymore.

“Yeah, well. My boss has been after me lately.”

It’s not a lie. Last time the heat had come on suddenly and unexpectedly in the middle of a case, while he was staring into the dead eyes of Jeremy Olmstead, peppered with wounds. Shaken, scared, and consumed with the fever, he’d missed his standard routine here, in favor of a locked DC hotel room, a few toys, and a _lot_ of alcohol.

He smiles. He doesn’t regale her with this detail.

“Well don’t think you can run off and forget about me,” she says, with a wink and a lewd motion with her tongue. It’s all a game—while he reeks of the oncoming fever, she smells only like spilled liquor and cheap perfume, nothing beneath to hint that she can help him. She knows what he’s here for, and she knows it’s not her. She gives him a fond look over the drink she pours him nonetheless, the kind that people sometimes used to before ruffling his hair, when he was younger, and returns to her other customers.

The familiar haze had begun to creep behind his eyes earlier today, and after enough significant looks turned his way in the classroom, more than the usual curiosity, he’d had to admit to himself it was time. Had popped a temporary and two aspirins to quell the inner aching, and had headed here.

The suppressant is starting to wear off now, the pulsing in his veins, the heat and hyperawareness clawing back with each moment. The hand in which he grips his drink is covered in a thin sheen of sweat, and he swallows heartily as the heat moves into the next stage, lets the burn of alcohol settle through his belly. He scents the room then, finds them mingled amongst the crowd, always a few. It’s something that he has never ceased to marvel at, the olfactory world that had opened up to him after he presented, and he marvels at it now. He tries to guess who, from the way they stand, move, the way they hold their drink. He’s gotten good at this.

There’s a lackluster pool game going on, between a group of men about his age, perhaps a little older. They’re all rough, the kind that probably own the bikes parked out front. They all jostle each other, shouting, a show of male camaraderie, and the underlying musk of alpha fills the spaces between their loud insults. Will wrinkles his nose. Maybe.

He can still go a couple hours before the situation is really dire. He’ll sit here, nurse his drink, and watch until someone catches his eye. As the minutes tick by, and his blood screams louder for him to fuck, he will become less picky.

Though the one with the beard and the bandanna looks like he could bend and crush Will into all manner of shapes. Maybe he should—

The sound of ambient rock gives way to a familiar, rapid beat, and Will’s heart stops. His head whips to the jukebox, and for a moment, the illusion is overwhelming. Broad shoulders, the strong, ropy forearms, the familiar tilt of the head. His mouth goes dry, and his chest wrenches as an awful longing tears a hole in him, despite his attempts to quell it, and all he wants in the world is for him to turn around, smile in his barely-there way...

There is a wooded road in Belgium that’s been totally forgotten. He’d read about it, late one sleepless night, with a sick, clammy curiosity under the glow of his computer. He’d searched, found picture after picture of the cars, rotting hulks, parked and abandoned, ferns growing through the air vents, loam gathering on the seats. He’d been horrified at the idea that they’d once been full of people, going _where_ nobody knew, but going _somewhere,_ and that now they were not. Parked and left there, in green stasis, until the road cracked and became overgrown, until they rotted and rusted beyond recognition, beyond the possibility of salvage.

In the first days, after Hannibal, he’d thought about those pictures a lot. Had nightmares, and for the sting of a moment now, it comes back to him, unbidden. He’s reminded of the string wrapped, noose-like around his heart, and past the familiar, but not familiar figure, he stares once again down the green and endless road.

The man turns back to his friends, beer in hand, and it’s not _him_ , of course it’s not, Hannibal wouldn’t be caught dead in a place like this, and Will lets out a shaky breath.

There is something about him that bears a striking similarity, though the man really looks nothing like him. His mouth is all wrong, his eyes a murky blue green instead of the color of the whiskey in Will’s glass, and yet. It’s in his poise, the way he holds himself, the way he moves, and his hands too, bear enough of a similarity that he just might work.

“Pleased to meet you,” the man crows along to the song, approaching his friends with his beer held high, “Hope you guess my name!”

Will’s pulse beats louder in his ears than the music, and the chilled, shivery wanting comes next, steals his breath. He closes his eyes, wills away unwanted memories that rise along with it, memories of teeth and pounding hips, his name murmured lazily against the shell of his ear, through perfect lips. The room shimmers strangely around him, here and not.

He counts to ten.

When he opens his eyes, Hannibal is gone. It’s only this dingy room, people drinking, scattered conversations. Cars rotting in a line.

He catches the eye of the man across the bar. And, ignoring the shattering feeling in his chest, he smiles.

 

Will’s rules are simple. No kissing, no marks. That’s all he asks.

He shudders underneath the man, mashed carelessly into the covers, moaning as he’s split open. The man is somewhat less than tender with him, but that’s fine by him. It feels better this way, to treat it like the dull, animal drive that it is, to take all the emotion out of the equation and give in to the spike of desire that, at least temporarily, blurs the edges of everything else.

His face pressed against the motel coverlet, a cock slamming thickly into him, it’s easy to forget.

The man grunts something, angles just right, and for a second, everything is whited out as Will’s toes curl, his mouth falls open on pure bliss. God, yes. _This_ is why he does this.

But then.

Then there are teeth pressing against the back of his neck, not enough to break the skin, yet, but the promise of it is there, the hands that grip him too tightly in place stopping him from jerking away as he instinctively wants to do.

“H— _hey_!” he manages, tries to twist away. A hand fists itself into his hair, slams him down, and now he’s even more trapped than before, stunned, pinned beneath the sweating, grunting weight, forced into place while the alpha takes his pleasure. The teeth return, latching to the juncture between neck and shoulder, and a fluttery, panicky feeling fights through, even as his skin cries out for more.

“ _Hey_. I said no—”

Inside him, the man begins to knot, and he struggles to maintain composure through the sudden wave of pain and pleasure the added pressure brings. He feels it hard against his prostate, and a broken, desperate cry breaks from his throat when it lodges, slams against him from the inside.

“N—no marks,” he gasps, writhes against the teeth that refuse to unlatch. When the man groans again, he feels breath hot and wet against his skin, feels it inside him where the alpha’s cock gives a sudden throb. His struggling only seems to add incentive; the man grabs handfuls of his ass, spreads him further, the next rough thrust pushes him up against the headboard. Will sobs and tries not to come with this stranger’s mouth on him.

He wonders if Hannibal feels it, when he lets someone else do this to him. He wonders if it’s a tug, a stab, an ache.

That’s all it takes, he’s gone. Miraculously, the teeth remove themselves as orgasm ripples through him, and little shocks follow as the alpha fills him, another series of grunts.

He doesn’t even know this man’s name.

It doesn’t matter.

He hates the next part, if only because there’s some shadow of intimacy in having to lie next to another human being. He checks himself out while they wait, not touching but for where they’re joined. The man smooths a finger over his neck, where he can feel the slight indents his teeth left.

“I’m sorry about that.”

“It’s fine,” Will says, fighting the overwhelming urge to flinch away from the touch that’s soft instead of rough. He wishes they could go back to fucking already. The sooner they do, the sooner the heat will pass, and he can go back to work.

“Just don't do it again.”

Back home. Back to sitting in a line of rotting cars, going nowhere.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (sorry!)


	6. Somebody Like You

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hannibal applies enough pressure to his chest to lay him back, press him into the coverlet with a soft sound of surprise, and settles above him. Their legs tangled, pressed chest to groin, he smooths his hand over Will’s cheek again. That look is back, and with Hannibal’s words still lingering in the space between them, Will fights the urge to look away from the intensity of it.
> 
> “Would you like to give this a chance, Will?” A kiss, pressed against his lips, and Will sighs into it. Another. “To see what we might become?”

“Wait, I like this song!”

Will jabs at the stereo, where Hannibal had just dismissed the Rolling Stones. The music blasts back on, he winces and turns it down, looks at Hannibal sheepishly.

“Of course you do,” Hannibal says, unable to hide the amused twitch from his lips. “It has loud, graceless instrumentation and you are seventeen. It’s an inevitable match.”

Will doesn’t bother to glare, he knows that Hannibal expects it. Instead, he listens to the music, lets the cold wind ruffle his hair through the window. It’s unseasonably nice for late November, they’re coming home from a day out in Baltimore, and Will is starting to suspect that until now, he’s never been really happy. He closes his eyes, leans back in the leather seat, and sighs.

_ So if you meet me, have some courtesy, have some sympathy, and some taste _

“If you’re under the impression that one day, I’ll magically unlearn liking the Stones just because I’ve gotten old,” Here, Will opens one eye to peer meaningfully at him, a smile playing at his mouth, “I hate to disappoint you.”

_ Pleased to meet you, hope you guessed my name _

Hannibal has the good grace to look affronted at his suggestion. 

“Cheeky.” he chides, his voice low and gravelly. Cold fingers of anticipation brush up Will’s spine, and he resettles in his seat, clears his throat.

“But maybe… you could teach me to appreciate your music too.” he offers in placation. When Hannibal turns to look at him, his eyes have that heavy, lazy wanting look, they drag all up and down his body like touch. Will swallows, feels it in his core.

“But uh, no promises. And no harpsichord,” he adds, and Hannibal’s smolder fades swiftly into a look of fond exasperation.

 

Back home—back at  _ Hannibal’s house _ , Will corrects himself quickly—Hannibal goes straight upstairs to shower. Will considers following, is tugged strongly in that direction, and the thought of wet, flushed, skin, and the noises that Hannibal makes right at the end. But instead, he goes to the kitchen to make coffee. Hannibal has a twelve hour shift starting soon, and thanks to Will he didn’t sleep the night before.

_ Guilt coffee _ , he muses, pouring the grounds. He’s not one hundred percent sure he’s doing it right, because of course Hannibal can’t even do coffee simple, but it seems to be working. It’s doing  _ something _ anyway. Will shrugs, and goes upstairs. 

The house looks much more like a home, since the first time he stepped foot in it. Furniture seems to arrive every weekend, and art, curtains. It’s still huge, and echoey at times, but it’s no longer empty, and everything about it screams Hannibal—a blend of the dramatically modern and the ostentatiously antique.

Will tops the stairs, past the display case holding what appears to be a complete samurai suit, peers curiously into the room across the landing. It’s softer than the rest of the house, painted in blues and lavenders, a window seat and white furniture. The mythical Mischa Lecter will soon reside there, where Will helped spackle the walls, put together the bed. He’s not sure if he feels jealous at the thought. He shouldn’t, of course, but something strange tickles at the back of his neck nonetheless. Fear? Anticipation, maybe. He shakes it off.

In Hannibal’s room, it’s much more comfortable. It’s still obviously Hannibal’s, the dark colors, pretentious art, and sheets with a thread count higher than the contents of Will’s bank account. But there are also traces of Will here. The books scattered on the nightstand, sci-fi paperbacks that Hannibal balks at, the third drawer down, (coincidentally the only one hanging open, a sock trying for escape) full of his clothes. He’d picked out the painting hung in the adjoining bathroom too, of a little ship bobbing out on calm, oil-painted waters. It reminds him of days spent with his dad up North, on Lake Erie. Hundreds of miles away from the roiling Atlantic, everything had moved slower there. He’d spent a whole summer working with his dad, fishing, and unsuccessfully courting a girl whose parents owned the cabins they were staying in. Until now, he would have said that it was the happiest time he could remember.

Steam is coiling out through the open shower door, and Will hums his appreciation at the sight of Hannibal rinsing off beneath the stream. He’s bigger than Will, particularly through the shoulders, but he’s still slim, and stripped of his many layers of clothing, he looks much younger. Will’s eyes travel up, along the curve of his spine, to his lips, wet, and his closed eyes.

“I made coffee,” he says lamely, tugs his shirt off over his head. “I think.”

At this, Hannibal swipes a hand over his face, turns a raised-eyebrows smile towards him.

“You think?”

“Mhm.” Will is now shuffling out of his pants, his boxers. “Your coffeemaker looks like it came out of a spaceship, so I’m not sure, but there is coffee perhaps being brewed downstairs.”

Hannibal laughs, flashing his imperfect teeth. Will thinks idly that he might love him, and this thought does not startle him, merely tugs at that warm place in his chest, that now-familiar connection that seems to be growing brighter with each day.

He steps into the shower carefully, and Hannibal makes room, hands him a bottle of expensive looking body wash.

“Well, thank you for the hypothetical coffee,” Hannibal nods, his voice laced with teasing. Will sets down the soap, choosing instead to slide his hands along the plane of Hannibal’s chest. His skin is the same temperature as the water—scalding hot—and they regard each other a moment in the pale blue and grey world of steam. Hannibal’s look is full of open fondness, then grows serious. He runs a hand gently down Will’s cheek.

“I need to speak with you about something.”

Will’s stomach twists unpleasantly. In all of his experience, those words have never begun a conversation that he came away from happier than he went into it. It must show on his face, because Hannibal’s smile returns, slight and soft, and he brings his other hand up so that he’s cupping Will’s jaw.

“Nothing to be concerned about,” he reassures, using the same low, calm tone he had when they’d first met, when Will had been falling apart in a hallway. “Only a minor change of plans.”

Will nods against the strong hands, blinks water from his eyes. He leans forward, and Hannibal indulges him, presses their lips together. It’s warm, and wet, and Will tries diligently to draw it out as long as possible.

 

The coffee is not that bad, though it’s a little strong. He sips it while Hannibal finishes dressing for work, flips through one of the books from the nightstand that he’s not really reading. His nerves are alight, preparing him for the worst despite Hannibal’s reassurances, so much so that he can’t even appreciate the spectacle that is Hannibal Lecter getting dressed.

When, at last, Hannibal comes to sit by him on the bed, he’s worked himself up into thinking that this is a break up.  _ You’re young still _ , he imagines Hannibal saying,  _ you will thank me, one day _ . He carefully constructs his counter arguments in his head;  _ what difference would a few months make, anyway? _ Followed by a calm, sure,  _ I know what I want. _

“I feel that I need to prepare you,” Hannibal starts. Will’s stomach drops,  _ here it comes _ . “Mischa is… unusual.”

Will takes a long sip of coffee, feigning an utter lack of surprise. He thinks he’s doing pretty well, considering that his hands don’t betray the rapid pace of his heart.

“Unusual?” he asks, “Like— like what, she collects postage stamps?”

Hannibal smiles down, where his fingers trace the lines of Will’s.

“Not as such. What I mean to say is, she can be very temperamental.”

Will frowns, sets the coffee aside, and settles closer to Hannibal.

“I don’t understand.”

Hannibal sighs almost imperceptibly, licks his lips. He looks as though whatever he’s about to do will pain him, and panicky thoughts flutter back to Will’s mind.

“When our parents died, she was still very young. It was a difficult time for me, but for her it was even more so. Traumatic.”

He does not look up when he says this, and it occurs to Will that maybe he hasn’t spoken these words aloud in a long time. 

“She can sometimes be difficult, is what I mean. I want you to be ready for that. As much as you can be.”

Will nods, feeling an ease in his chest despite himself. It’s not about him, then.

“Of course.”

“There is one further thing,” Hannibal says, the spell breaking as he looks at Will again. “She is coming this week, instead of next, and I think that perhaps I should stay with her alone a few days. Get her acclimated, before breaking the news to her.”

“The news?” Will asks, his mouth quirking. He doesn’t like the idea of space, however temporary, but it’s not the worst case scenario. He wonders, vaguely unsettled, if Hannibal had structured the conversation this way on purpose; disarmed him, so that his proposition would seem less harsh in comparison.

“I can only imagine how I would feel if I found out that she had Bonded with someone. We’ve always been very close, so I am anticipating it being a bit of a—”

“Bonded…” Will interrupts. His heart speeds again at the sound of the word, and he feels his limbs tingle, as though filled with static. “What are you— what do you mean?”

He only has a vague notion of the concept, like many of the phenomena he’s discovering each new day as an omega. It’s whispered about between classes, gossiped about celebrities, but much like the elusive swimming pool supposed to be on the school roof, he had always thought it was just that—gossip.  _ Soulmate _ . Even the word feels like it belongs to a renaissance text, not everyday life, where he burns coffee and sleeps next to Hannibal two nights a week. Hell, he was just toying with the concept of  _ loving _ someone, how could he have—

Hannibal’s face softens, and he opens his mouth to speak, closes it again.

He takes Will’s hand instead, covering it with his own. Will watches this somewhat distantly, as he brings their joined hands to rest on his chest. Will feels the steady in and out of Hannibal’s breath, the dull, slow pound of his heart. He swallows, feels that tug again, somewhere in his own chest, as though in response.

“Do you feel that?” Hannibal asks, so quietly Will almost doesn’t catch it. Will nods. What he feels is a strange and shaky longing. His heart and Hannibal’s beat as one, his pulse skipping to match pace. Hannibal’s hand is bigger than his, spreads with their fingers intertwined. Then, he switches them, gently, so that Will’s hand guides his back to its owner’s chest.

Hannibal’s skin settles warm and heavy against his shirt, and his heart stutters again, beneath their joined fingers. Hannibal chuckles warmly, and Will allows a lopsided grin, a breathless laugh in return.

“I was not sure at first… and I don’t know precisely how it happened,” Hannibal says, pressing his forehead to Will’s. They both look down at the place where Hannibal’s hand sprawls wide, covering half his chest. Will feels a little dizzy. “But I feel you with me, when you’re not. I—”

He huffs, a self-deprecating sound.

“I thought you knew.”

If this is an act, then Hannibal deserves a fucking Oscar. Will’s throat feels strange, and he barely manages to nod,

“I guess… I knew it felt different. Than before. But this is—” he manages a strangled laugh, “Hannibal, this is crazy.”

Hannibal applies enough pressure to his chest to lay him back, press him into the coverlet with a soft sound of surprise, and settles above him. Their legs tangled, pressed chest to groin, he smooths his hand over Will’s cheek again. That look is back, and with Hannibal’s words still lingering in the space between them, Will fights the urge to look away from the intensity of it.

“Would you like to give this a chance, Will?” A kiss, pressed against his lips, and Will sighs into it. Another. “To see what we might become?”

Will feels the hum of connection between them grow and twist. It’s not a path they walk down, but an ocean beneath them, an old and powerful current, the waves whispering  _ jump _ . 

It scares him. And he  _ wants _ it. 

He nods, meeting Hannibal’s gaze. 

“Yes,” he murmurs, soft but sure. They kiss again, and it’s vertigo, it’s beautiful, and he lets himself fall.


	7. Wolf Trap, Virginia

He drives back on Sunday night, wearing a thicker scarf than the weather really calls for. The remnants of heat are trickling through his veins and giving way to the familiar, creeping sense of shame. It’s not unlike a hangover, he thinks, his head throbbing, drained after days of sensory overload, leaving him feeling ragged and empty. _It wasn’t always like this-_  he stops that thought in its tracks, because remembering it as anything else is a raw source of pain that he doesn’t feel like he has the skin for just now. When he arrives, his house a dark, solemn oasis against the backdrop of a grey sky and bare trees, he sighs with relief, ready to sleep it off. Memories of the weekend flicker unbidden through his mind, the man with rough hands who with passing time had reminded him less and less of— well. Who’d become less appealing as the fever faded.

 

“You can call, if you want,” the man had said, as Will pulled on Thursday’s jeans. “We’re not getting any younger, you know.”

Will looked at him sharply, then at the crumpled receipt he offered, numbers scrawled across the back. He’d felt a stab of pity for this man, the worry lines in his forehead, the resignation in eyes that couldn’t quite seem to meet Will’s. It turned, too quickly, to disgust as he remembered the tooth-shaped bruises on his neck.

“Thanks,” he’d managed, took the paper and shoved it into his pocket. The man’s shoulders had slumped, both of them knowing he’d throw it away the first chance he got.

 

Wet noses bump his palm in greeting as he steps inside, turns the deadbolt. He’s glad to see his pack, buries his face into a furry neck and breathes in the warm, animal smell of them. 

“Hey there,” he says, his voice soft, “Did Alana take good care of you?”

Excited yelps are all he gets in response, and he smiles, busies himself with defrosting. Their food; then, when they’re happily distracted, his. He’s had two drinks and pulled the blankets from his bed onto the couch before he can bring himself to check his messages, the little blue light on his phone a queasy reminder of real life.

_ Morgue. 8 am. _

says the first, with all Jack’s usual charm. Will snorts, alarming the dogs, and takes a big, burning swallow before reading the next. The drink turns sour in his stomach when he does, and he fights the urge to turn off the phone, bury himself in blankets and liquor until Jack stops calling.

_ It’s the Ripper. _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aaaand we're updated. Thanks to everyone who's read this (and especially commented!) in the past two years. I've had several life events make writing a little more difficult nowadays, but I'm going to do my best to pick back up where I left the boys, so that their story gets the ending they deserve :) I'll see you in about a week with the next chapter. Until then!


	8. To dream of you

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“Will Graham, I presume,” she echoes, her eyes narrowing on a smile that doesn’t quite reach the rest of her face. It reminds him eerily of Hannibal, the similarity suddenly stark. “My brother speaks constantly of you.”_
> 
> _Will tries in vain to fight the flush he feels creeping across his neck._
> 
> _“I’m afraid you’ve charmed him rather completely,”_

Days pass, then a week, then two. The trees go bare and skeletal, a fine sheen of frost coats the grass each morning, and school becomes restless as they inch closer to winter break. Will is tempted to call many times, he does once and gets no answer. Even this—the curt, pleasant roll of Hannibal’s voice over the machine—makes his chest ache. He feels acutely pathetic, and spends his time working on some of the fishing flies he and his dad had started, idly flipping channels, doing homework that he’d normally let slide until the early hours before class. He has conversations in his mind, conjuring a poor copy of Hannibal who shimmers in the air if looked at too closely, all plaid and silk, mirage-like curls of lip.

_I saw a Bentley the other day, I thought it might have been yours. It wasn’t._

_What’s so great about truffles? Figured you would know._

_I miss you._

And he tries, with increasing desperation, to make Hannibal speak back, to recreate the warm pitch and flow of syllables, but the illusion remains silent, merely cocks his head curiously, watches. He wonders if this is what addiction is like; this sick, shivery longing. Finally, when he is getting close to walking the miles to Hannibal’s house and presenting himself uninvited—delicate Mischa Lecter or no—he gets a call.

He’s sprawled across the faded blue couch in the living room, watching TV. The newscasters flirt with each other awkwardly, some tourists are still missing in Paris, a major storm is poised to hit the East Coast. They’ve just switched to coverage of an unfortunate, poncho-clad anchor, shouting under sheets of rain, when the phone rings.

He listens to the low sound of his dad’s voice from the kitchen, tensed, and when he hears his name called he tries not to run.

“For you,” Dad hands the line to him, an amused look softening weather-worn features. He doesn’t stay to listen, but gives Will his space, ambles his way back to the garage.

“Hello?”

He sounds out of breath, and he screws his eyes shut, bangs his head back against the doorway lightly, flushed with embarrassment he’s glad Hannibal can’t see.

“Will,” the familiar voice answers. It loosens some of the tightness from his chest, just the single syllable. He leans back, relaxed a little, closes his eyes. “I’m sorry I haven’t been in touch, there has been a great deal to arrange in the last weeks.”

“It’s fine,” he says, trying to sound gruff and casual. As though he hasn’t spent every minute of the last few weeks waiting for this conversation.

Hannibal chuckles, knowing.

“It’s most certainly not. I was wondering if you were free tomorrow evening? I would like to have you for dinner.”

Will peeks around the doorway, brows raised, making sure his dad isn’t within earshot.

“Yeah, uh. I could do tomorrow.” _Not soon enough_ , his mind offers, and he swallows. “I’m…” softer now, and if he cradles the phone any closer to his mouth he’ll be in danger of swallowing it. “I’m really glad you called.”

There’s a pause, a brief shuffling sound. As though Hannibal, too, is keeping this conversation close, and it’s a little thrilling in its secrecy.

“I’ve missed you terribly, Will. I want you to know that.”

His voice has a raw quality to it that was missing moments ago. It spreads warmth in Will’s cheeks, tingles in the nape of his neck.

“Me too.”

“Tomorrow then?”

Will feels a smile creep across his face, despite himself,

“Tomorrow.”

 

* * *

 

Hannibal picks him up after his dad leaves for the night shift, and Will leans across the center console to steal a hard, desperate kiss. Hannibal’s hand rests warm against his thigh as they drive, and it makes his heart stammer. He’s surprised by how much it feels at once like home and yet totally foreign when he steps through the front door, into an entryway that smells inexplicably of cloves.

Hannibal’s hand rests at the small of his back, leading him towards the dining room, where the long table has been draped in white and laid with china and silver.

Will’s brows shoot up, suddenly feeling underdressed.

“Wow.”

Hannibal looks pleased by his reaction, a small smile tugging at the corner of his mouth.

“I’ll be just a moment, please make yourself comfortable.”

And with that, he gusts away, back towards the kitchen, leaving Will feeling suddenly awkward, an intruder in this place he’d so recently begun to think of as home. He sits cautiously at one of the three place settings, eyeing the sprawl of greenery that makes up the centerpiece. He snorts, amused at the utter kitsch of it when he spies what he hopes is not a real butterfly tucked in among the herbs.

“He does get carried away with himself, doesn’t he?”

Will turns, startled. He hadn’t registered the soft click of her shoes, too busy surveying the scenery, and now she is there, in the doorway. From her simple, dark skirt, to the elegant swirl of her fair hair, she looks far more comfortable than he feels in this ostentatious setting, either too used to Hannibal’s performance, or perhaps part of the decoration herself. When she moves to the seat at the far end of the table, it seems as though she completes the setting, and Will’s lips twitch, realizing that Hannibal had probably planned it that way.

“Mischa Lecter, I presume.”

“Will Graham, I presume,” she echoes, her eyes narrowing on a smile that doesn’t quite reach the rest of her face. It reminds him eerily of Hannibal, the similarity suddenly stark. “My brother speaks constantly of you.”

Will tries in vain to fight the flush he feels creeping across his neck.

“I’m afraid you’ve charmed him rather completely,” she adds. Her accent is not quite the same as Hannibal’s, it’s milder, her words bleeding into one another like music, her consonants soft. It makes it difficult to sense her tone, though Will feels her walls acutely, the guardedness; she’s testing him.

Before Will can summon up a response, losing the battle with his blush, Hannibal comes back in, an oversized platter and a bottle of wine in his arms.

“Ah, so you’ve met,” he says, unveiling dishes one by one, announcing each like a debutante, the steam coiling between them and obscuring Mischa.

“C’est donc ca ta petite chienne?”

She interrupts Hannibal’s monologue about loin and blackberry wine sauce, and he stills, disapproval clouding his face. Will feels it himself, the small pull of contained anger in Hannibal’s voice, soft but dangerous.

“ _Mischa_.”

Will is surprised himself, the dissonance of the vulgar words from her carefully pursed lips. But then, he smirks, realizing she hadn’t known he would understand.

“Oui, mais attention, je mords,” he responds in the stretch of silence between them, snapping his teeth a little over a grin. They both turn to him, with ridiculously similar expressions of surprise, and then miraculously, she laughs. It fills the air, a warm, open sound, and Will can almost feel the tension drain from the air.

“Oh, Hannibal. I like him.”

Hannibal’s shoulders drop, and he turns a fond look in Will’s direction.

“As I said, he’s full of surprises.”

After dinner they all clean up, and then Mischa excuses herself to other rooms, kissing both of them on each cheek before she leaves. Minutes later, the dishes are drying on the counter, and the sound of piano drifts lazily from somewhere deep in the house.

“You did quite well tonight, Will,” Hannibal says, drying his hands on a towel before folding it once, twice, into a straight, neat square. “Mischa is notoriously difficult to impress.”

“Hm. I wonder where she gets that from,” Will says mildly, picking up his glass, taking a slow, warm sip. The dark look turned his way is playful underneath, the glimmer of coals rather than a true danger. They take their conversation outside, where chairs in the garden look out over the woods below, and Will feels the giddiness of good food, wine, and being the object of those hungry eyes again. It makes him feel oddly powerful, knowing he commands this man’s attention, which in turn makes him braver than he otherwise might. He steals a kiss that lingers beyond just affection, full of promise and challenge at once.

Or, that might be the wine. Both, he muses.

“So does this mean we can stop sneaking around?” He asks, smiling, setting his glass aside carefully on the smooth, glass table. “Now that Mischa’s determined my… intentions for you are honest.”

Hannibal cocks his head, narrows his eyes at Will.

“Are they, truly? I seem to remember you leading me into all kinds of debauchery.”

Will feels goosebumps prickle across his skin, a pleasant shiver in his spine, a sensation that has nothing to do with the cool evening air and everything to do with the lazy, daring gaze turned on him. Hannibal’s eyes are heavy-lidded, his mouth curled subtly and pleasantly. The light from the house outlines his hair, a sharp curve of cheek, and Will thinks to himself,

_God help me, I love this man_.

“Maybe it’s been too long,” Will says lightly, not betraying the churning of want growing in him, “I can’t seem to remember who did the corrupting.”

A glance, quick, another sip of wine.

“Maybe we should try again. For curiosity’s sake.”

 

* * *

 

Clothes scattered, mouths hungry, they come together, skin on skin at last and Will feels again the crash of waves in the way they grasp for each other, desperate. Back in his bedroom, where they first found each other like this, he traces his fingertips down hard arms, soft lips, before pressing them together, the dim glow of a streetlight through the blinds creating a strange, shadowy world in which only the two of them exist. They are a boat in a great and angry sea, Hannibal’s ragged voice coaxing him on a beacon in the dark. He lets his head fall back as Hannibal knees his legs wider, cries out with the first tight push, teeth grazing his throat lightly. They cling together, an ebb and flow to their movements as Will’s body remembers instinctively, as he comes undone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As promised :) A little more fluff this time, I'm not in a mood to wreck them right now.
> 
> Also: Hopefully my native French speaker has not played a terrible joke on me in translating the French dialogue!


End file.
